Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob.
Speaker 3: Lamb and this is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: And in today's episode of Weird House Cinema, we're going
Speaker 2: to return once more to the wild world of Mexican
Speaker 2: horror to consider a film and a filmmaker often celebrated
Speaker 2: as one of its true greats. We'll be discussing the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven cult classic Alucarda, also known as Alucarda
Speaker 2: The Daughter of Darkness, directed by Juan Lopez Montezuma. While
Speaker 2: not well received by mainstream Mexican audiences at the time,
Speaker 2: it has become an obvious cult classic, a midnight movie.
Speaker 2: It's been championed by the likes of Germeal de Toro,
Speaker 2: David J. Skahl, Michael Weldon, just to name a few.
Speaker 2: This is one you poked around online and you can
Speaker 2: see folks are constantly discovering and discovering Alokarda, and everyone
Speaker 2: seems to be blown away by it when they encounter it.
Speaker 3: I think it's exactly the kind of film right for
Speaker 3: this sort of rediscovery, and I don't know a late
Speaker 3: positive reception because of the different textures that it gets into.
Speaker 3: A part of it feels like an art film. You know,
Speaker 3: it has some really interesting writing that's not writing and
Speaker 3: performance that is, you know, not just going through the
Speaker 3: standard horror tropes. But then there is also a lot
Speaker 3: of just standard horror exploitation content, and the way they
Speaker 3: blend together is unusual and interesting. It's almost an intellectual film.
Speaker 3: But then it's also just a you know, frenzied getting
Speaker 3: naked with the devil kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this film is it's a lot of things,
Speaker 2: as we'll discuss. There's definitely a strong European gothic horror
Speaker 2: element to it, though to be clear, it is set
Speaker 2: and filmed in Mexico, and then there's also a strong
Speaker 2: avant garde surrealist element to it, and all of these
Speaker 2: things kind of mixed together. As the name suggests, Alocardo,
Speaker 2: which spelled backwards, is a Dracula.
Speaker 3: This is certainly it is not just the Dracula.
Speaker 2: Dracula yeah or yeah, or you know, it's the feminine
Speaker 2: version of Alocarde, I guess. But yeah, so it's certainly
Speaker 2: a vampire film, or at least a film with a
Speaker 2: vampire in it. But it's also a lesbian love story.
Speaker 2: It's a smoldering criticism of organized religion and just a
Speaker 2: delirious fever dream of blasphemous horror.
Speaker 3: Certainly, blasphemous is an interesting lesbian love story. Is I
Speaker 3: wonder about the criticism of organized religion that is one
Speaker 3: of the weirdest themes realized in the film. Because we
Speaker 3: were sort of talking about this off mic, I would
Speaker 3: say the middle stretch of the movie is strongly anti clerical,
Speaker 3: and it sets up the Catholic authorities, the priests and
Speaker 3: the and some of the nuns as almost the villains
Speaker 3: of the movie. They're depicted as cruel and sadistic and
Speaker 3: superstitious in these scenes with self flagellation and the torture
Speaker 3: of Justine. But then there's a very strange turn where
Speaker 3: essentially all of these these mad clerics that are being
Speaker 3: set up as the villains in the middle of the
Speaker 3: movie are vindicated and proven right well to a certain extent,
Speaker 3: to a certain extent, and uh, then it's kind of like, wait, what,
Speaker 3: Like the character who the doctor character who comes in
Speaker 3: to criticize what they're doing to these to these poor girls,
Speaker 3: is ultimately like humbled for his naive view of like
Speaker 3: not believing that the Devil is real and will turn
Speaker 3: nuns into zombies.
Speaker 2: Well, this will be interesting to discuss. I would I
Speaker 2: would argue that the clerical of side of things, that
Speaker 2: they're never redeemed in this picture. I think I think
Speaker 2: they're they're essentially villains throughout, but I don't.
Speaker 3: Know there's there.
Speaker 2: This is a great thing about this film is there's
Speaker 2: a lot of room for discussion and interpretation.
Speaker 3: I don't know if the main claricy I mean's certainly
Speaker 3: like fatherless arro and stuff. I don't know if they're
Speaker 3: ever made to look nice in the end, but they
Speaker 3: are sort of proven right, like their worldview was the
Speaker 3: correct one in the end.
Speaker 2: To a certain extent. Well, well we'll get we'll get
Speaker 2: back to this. But I think one way to think
Speaker 2: about the film is to certainly compare it to Ken
Speaker 2: Russell's nineteen seventy one masterpiece of the Devils, which of
Speaker 2: course starred Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed. Like this film,
Speaker 2: The Devils is often sometimes thrown under the broad subgenre
Speaker 2: categorization of nonsploitation cinema, which it's a big tin nonsploitation.
Speaker 2: I mean it's a small tin in some ways, but
Speaker 2: a big ten in others. So others so called nonsploitation
Speaker 2: films often center around explosions of sexuality, madness, and violence
Speaker 2: in a convent setting, but in other cases the sleazier
Speaker 2: exploitation elements are more upfront and center, and when none
Speaker 2: exploitation is referenced, that's generally the sort of picture we
Speaker 2: think of, right, you know, something a little more purely
Speaker 2: scandalous without any kind of serious message wrapped up in
Speaker 2: the offering.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean to the extent that there is a
Speaker 3: serious message. I think these movies are usually concerned mostly
Speaker 3: with sexual repression, and that they will feature a lot
Speaker 3: of you know, habit ripping by the third ACD.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And The Devil's is certainly that sort of picture.
Speaker 2: But in the Devils all of the conflict emerges from
Speaker 2: this sexual repression. So we end up with you know,
Speaker 2: mass hysteria, murder and madness and oppression, and sexual repression
Speaker 2: is like the root cause of everything. Just to simplify
Speaker 2: a great film. In this movie, however, as we've already
Speaker 2: been alluding to, yes, there is sexual repression and just
Speaker 2: general oppress from the Church. But we also come to
Speaker 2: learn that, oh, yeah, the devil is apparently real. The God,
Speaker 2: to some extent or another is also real. All these
Speaker 2: supernatural forces are in play. And then, therefore, how does
Speaker 2: that change our interpretation of madness and mass hysteria.
Speaker 3: Not just God and the devil, but pyrokinesis and yeah,
Speaker 3: zombies and vampirism. Like a lot of stuff gets thrown
Speaker 3: in at the end there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And also the vision of God that we see
Speaker 2: in this picture is at the very least a sterner God,
Speaker 2: more of an Old Testament vengeance God, as opposed to
Speaker 2: sort of like the benevolent grandfather power that is generally
Speaker 2: more in play in some of your Gothic cars, where
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, the power of God there is here
Speaker 2: to serve as a massive battery for the crucifix that
Speaker 2: you use to ward off the vampires. That's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the power of God in many of these other
Speaker 3: stories is there too save the protagonists at the end,
Speaker 3: to help and to save here. To the extent that
Speaker 3: God's power is made manifest, it is I think only
Speaker 3: a punishing power.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: If anything, it's like God is real, the devil is real.
Speaker 2: These two forces are in opposition, and then humanity is
Speaker 2: just ground to a pulp between these two opposing forces. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that may ultimately be the central message of the movie.
Speaker 2: But again, this is a film that is going to
Speaker 2: lend itself well to varying interpretations because it ultimately presents
Speaker 2: kind of a kaleidoscope image of things, as we'll discuss.
Speaker 2: All right. I don't have an elevator pitch for this one.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you have something kindling there.
Speaker 3: Joe, Well, not one that easily works just as text.
Speaker 3: But I am imagining a kind of quick cut in
Speaker 3: a trailer that I would put together for this film,
Speaker 3: and it would be a Lukarta saying the line, do
Speaker 3: you know how small creatures love each other? I'll show you,
Speaker 3: and then it just cuts to everything being on fire.
Speaker 2: That's good, that's good. All right. Well, let's go ahead
Speaker 2: and listen to just a little bit of the trailer
Speaker 2: audio for this picture, not the full trailer, I think,
Speaker 2: and uh, and this is I believe going to be
Speaker 2: the Spanish language trailer, as we'll discuss, though this movie
Speaker 2: was filmed in English and then then dubbed into Spanish.
Speaker 2: Alka Got the Father Command, Stee, Got the Son Command Stee,
Speaker 2: God the Holy Ghost Command.
Speaker 4: Stee, Susanna Kamini a d not French Motuma.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, if you would like to watch Alokarta
Speaker 2: before proceeding with this episode or rewatch it, well, there
Speaker 2: are at least a couple of main ways to view it.
Speaker 2: I initially watched it on the Mondo Macabro DVD, which
Speaker 2: has been out for a while now. They recently put
Speaker 2: out another one of Montezuma's films, The Mention of Madness
Speaker 2: on Blu Ray, But as far as I know, and
Speaker 2: I was checking in a little bit throughout the year,
Speaker 2: there's no word on Alokarta also getting the Blu Ray
Speaker 2: treatment anytime soon, but obviously there's hope that that would
Speaker 2: come to pass. The DVD is really solid though, film
Speaker 2: quality is perfectly fine, and it features some nice extras
Speaker 2: and as of this recording, you can also stream Alocarda
Speaker 2: via the excellent Criterion channel. It's currently featured as part
Speaker 2: of their ten film Nunsploit playlist, which includes some other
Speaker 2: great films, including The Devils and So. As I was
Speaker 2: rewatching parts of the film while working on notes, I
Speaker 2: rewatched it on Criterion Channel and the film quality is
Speaker 2: the same as on the DVD.
Speaker 3: I also watched it on the Criterion Channel stream. That
Speaker 3: was a good upload, I will say. So, you said
Speaker 3: you've got the Mondo Macabro DVD.
Speaker 2: Yes, or I rented it from Video Drum here in Atlanta.
Speaker 3: I see, I've got one. I haven't watched yet, but
Speaker 3: I've got a nunsploitation blu ray from Mondo Micabre for
Speaker 3: a different film called Satanico Pandemonium.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's another one. That's another title you frequently see
Speaker 2: in discussion of nunsploitation. But I have not seen it myself.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen it yet, so I can't vouch for
Speaker 3: it either way. But yeah, that's by the same producer,
Speaker 3: so I think they may have put out a number
Speaker 3: of kind of wild nun films.
Speaker 2: It's great to see Criterion Collection and Mondo Macabre coming together.
Speaker 2: That's the same films. It's not always the case. All right, Well,
Speaker 2: let's go ahead and jump into a discussion of the
Speaker 2: folks involved in this picture, starting at the top with
Speaker 2: Juan Lopez Montezuma, the director. He also has story and
Speaker 2: screenplay credit producer and I'm not sure which one he is,
Speaker 2: but he also has a bit role as a monk
Speaker 2: in this one of the sort of hinchman monks that
Speaker 2: run around fetching things, tying people up. That's sort of
Speaker 2: you know, typical nonspolitation monk business.
Speaker 3: Those guys are supposed to be monks, the guys in
Speaker 3: the black robes with the hoods.
Speaker 2: I think, so, yeah, that's so.
Speaker 3: Weird because they nothing about them seems like they're of
Speaker 3: a religious order. They are hinchmen, as you said, they're
Speaker 3: used to. They're like the mechanics of the film, you know,
Speaker 3: they're they're the ones who have to like lift things
Speaker 3: and carry them around or tie somebody up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say that, as is often the case,
Speaker 2: this movie's probably not good as primary search for how
Speaker 2: monasteries and convents work. It has a lot to say
Speaker 2: about Catholicism, but it is not a good primary source
Speaker 2: for information on Catholicism. Montezuma lived nineteen thirty one through
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five. Mexican actor, producer, writer, TV and radio personality,
Speaker 2: and director, best known for a trio of nineteen seventies
Speaker 2: horror films that really challenged just what a Mexican horror
Speaker 2: film could be. He'd worked as an actor previously, mostly
Speaker 2: on the stage, but also started a long running Mexico
Speaker 2: city radio program called Panorama di jazz. I don't think
Speaker 2: he stayed on it long, but he started it and
Speaker 2: it apparently lasted for a very long time, kind of
Speaker 2: an institution. He also served as a I couldn't find
Speaker 2: any clips of this, but he was apparently a sort
Speaker 2: of horror host on TV as well.
Speaker 3: Oh cool.
Speaker 2: He would present I think it was like a late
Speaker 2: night thing and he would present old silent horror movies.
Speaker 2: And there's an extra on the Mondo disc where I
Speaker 2: think there it's an interview with Guillermo del Toro from
Speaker 2: I want to say, like two thousand and two or something,
Speaker 2: a good bit younger. But he reflects on this. He
Speaker 2: reflects fondly on watching Montezuma on this television program, presenting
Speaker 2: movies like Nosferatu. So Mantezuma became involved in avant garde
Speaker 2: Mexican theater. After this, he became a collaborator with the
Speaker 2: legendary Alejandro Jodorowski, serving as producer on his nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: eight film Fando and Liss, as well as his famous
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy metaphysical Western el Copo, and then he set
Speaker 2: out to make his own horror films, which certainly stand
Speaker 2: as fine examples of Mexican horror, but they were also
Speaker 2: Montezuma's rebellion against mainstream film and established horror cinema in
Speaker 2: Mexico as well. He was not a fan of traditional
Speaker 2: Mexican horror cinema, stating in one interview quote, the Mexican
Speaker 2: tradition for such films is very simplistic and very conformist.
Speaker 2: In my opinion, in spite of their surface delirium. I
Speaker 2: don't really like them very much.
Speaker 3: What surface delirium?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I found this really interesting, and I guess with
Speaker 2: as with most like broad statements like this, you can
Speaker 2: certainly point to counter examples from Mexican horror cinema and say, well,
Speaker 2: you know, this is not mere surface delirium. Maybe goes
Speaker 2: a bit deeper, but I get what he's saying. Like
Speaker 2: if you look at, say a, you look at an
Speaker 2: El Santo monster movie, and yes, there are these delirious
Speaker 2: elements on the surface of things, but the basic structure
Speaker 2: is going to be generally formulaic. There's nothing subversive there
Speaker 2: there's no surprise in the outcome. And so what he
Speaker 2: clearly sets out to do in his films is Montezuma,
Speaker 2: that is to create a true depth of delirium, so
Speaker 2: madness from bottom.
Speaker 3: To top, not shallow depravity, but deep depravity. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess I can see what he's saying that a
Speaker 3: lot of these older Mexican horror films, while they might
Speaker 3: have very weird sights and sounds or some strange things
Speaker 3: going on, ultimately the story is going to be somewhat
Speaker 3: predictable and its values are conventional.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know if I agree with that, but
Speaker 3: I understand what he's saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And again I think it's a criticism that
Speaker 2: is going to apply to certain films more than others.
Speaker 2: But it does seem to be like a motivating principle
Speaker 2: for him, And when you look at his films, you
Speaker 2: can see like, yeah, this is a guy that's trying
Speaker 2: to really make the weirdness and the madness go from
Speaker 2: bottom to top. So I was reading about this movie
Speaker 2: in Montezuma in general in a book by Doyle Green.
Speaker 2: He's a film critic and writer. The book is the
Speaker 2: Mexican cinema of darkness, and he also points out that
Speaker 2: Mexican horror films, especially Luca horror films, are big on
Speaker 2: telling rather than showing. I think we can think we
Speaker 2: can reflect on various examples where like Santo was having
Speaker 2: a discussion with a scientist and they lay out all
Speaker 2: the details, and so Montazuma is the opposite. He would
Speaker 2: rather show you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I can see that in this film. Actually
Speaker 3: this leans more on the other side. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff that it does not hold your hand. I
Speaker 3: don't know what's going on in some parts, like I
Speaker 3: really don't know why something happened sometimes or what it's
Speaker 3: supposed to mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and when there is an explanation, like when Father
Speaker 2: Lazaro describes what sort of demon he thinks they're dealing with,
Speaker 2: it really has no impact on anything.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well that almost seemed like a parody. I've got that
Speaker 3: line written down from later on, when he's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a Type six devil or something like. It almost
Speaker 3: seems like a parody of just the fussy taxonomy of
Speaker 3: evil that the clerics are using here.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, given all of this, it should come as no
Speaker 2: surprise that Montazuma generally worked outside of the mainstream Mexican
Speaker 2: film industry, at least in terms of financing and control.
Speaker 2: He still worked with notable professionals in Mexican filmmaking, and
Speaker 2: it apparently fiercely retained his own creative control over his visions.
Speaker 2: So his first film was nineteen seventy three's The Mansion
Speaker 2: of Madness, released in the States and sometimes still referenced
Speaker 2: listed in I Think in IMDb, and also sometimes streamable
Speaker 2: under the title Doctor Tar's Torture Dungeon. It's based on
Speaker 2: Edgar Allen Poe's The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Feather,
Speaker 2: and it tells the story of an asylum where the
Speaker 2: system of soothing has been abandoned in favor of a
Speaker 2: new system of well, let's say, a system of cruelty.
Speaker 2: And we quickly come to realize that this is the
Speaker 2: case where oh, the inmates are running the asylum now,
Speaker 2: and they're led by someone going by the name anyway
Speaker 2: of doctor Millard. And this individual is played in the
Speaker 2: movie by Claudio Brooke, who will be talking about here
Speaker 2: in a minute. This film is perhaps more of a
Speaker 2: dark surrealist comedy than a pure horror picture, though it
Speaker 2: does have gothic horror elements. I saw this a couple
Speaker 2: of years ago rather liked it. And this film, as
Speaker 2: with Alucarda, was shot in English.
Speaker 3: This might be a kind of strange comparison. But though
Speaker 3: I haven't seen the movie, some of the clips I
Speaker 3: have seen of Claudio Brooke in it, he a bit
Speaker 3: reminds me of Graham Chapman from Money Python.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of absurdity in it because
Speaker 2: he's you know, he ends up presenting himself initially as
Speaker 2: maybe a revolutionary doctor who's running the asylum, and then
Speaker 2: we quickly realized like, no, this was this was an
Speaker 2: inmate of the asylum who's taken over. And so there's
Speaker 2: a lot of toga wearing that ensues wild monologue's hysterical
Speaker 2: laughter and so forth. And he does have blonde hair,
Speaker 2: which certainly in that film, which adds to the.
Speaker 3: Experience kind of yeah, shaggy blonde hair. We'll get to
Speaker 3: more about Claudio Brooke in a minute, I'm sure, but
Speaker 3: I am impressed with the the range that he gets
Speaker 3: to portray in Alucarda.
Speaker 2: Oh Yeah, this is yeah, as we'll discuss this is
Speaker 2: the case where he had got to do a dual
Speaker 2: role and clearly had a lot of fun with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Hard to imagine two different parts more different.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Mantazuma followed Mansion up with a Hollywood co production,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy five's Mary Mary, Bloody Mary. I haven't seen
Speaker 2: this one, but it is a modern erotic vampire film
Speaker 2: and also sort of a jallo film, starring Christina Ferrera
Speaker 2: and featuring John Carodine in a small role. It was
Speaker 2: also shot in English, and it's also said to be
Speaker 2: quite good.
Speaker 3: You know my taste for jallo. I'm intrigued. I'll have
Speaker 3: to give this a look up. And then came alocarda,
Speaker 3: this is which we're talking about today. Montazum is best
Speaker 3: remembered and most controversial film due to its comparatively racy
Speaker 3: content and certainly it's blasphemous themes. It draws on both
Speaker 3: avant garde cinema and European Gothic hor traditions, and I
Speaker 3: would say just feels absolutely self assured in its vision.
Speaker 3: We may ponder and head scratch over what that vision
Speaker 3: ultimately is and what he's trying to say, but it
Speaker 3: seems very confident in its delivery. After these three big pictures,
Speaker 3: Montezuma's output was a bit more limited. He directed a
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty three crime thriller title To Kill a Stranger,
Speaker 3: which co starred Dean Stockwell and Donald Pleasants, and after
Speaker 3: that his projects saw even smaller audiences. There's nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: six as Welcome Maria and nineteen ninety four as The
Speaker 3: Food of Fear, And at some point he wanted to
Speaker 3: do a follow up to Alocarta titled Alokarta Rises from
Speaker 3: the Tomb, but that never came to fruition before his
Speaker 3: death in nineteen ninety five. As for other writers, let's see,
Speaker 3: there's Alexis Antita Uroyo. These are the only screenplay credits
Speaker 3: on the databases I was looking at. And then there's
Speaker 3: also Yolanda Lopez Montezuma, also credited with a writer, also
Speaker 3: with no other credits. I'm not sure if this is
Speaker 3: a relative or not just a name without much additional contact.
Speaker 3: And then it's also typically noted that this film is
Speaker 3: to some degree based on the novel Carmilla by Sheridan Lefanieu,
Speaker 3: who lived eighteen fourteenth through eighteen seventy three, Irish author
Speaker 3: who wrote, Yeah, eighteen seventy two's gothic novella Carmilla, a
Speaker 3: foundational vampire novel and one that explores a lesbian relationship
Speaker 3: with I'm to understand some amount of nuance. I think
Speaker 3: I started reading this book at this novella at some point,
Speaker 3: set it down and didn't pick it back up.
Speaker 2: That's on me, not on the novella. But I can't
Speaker 2: speak to it with much doubt because I haven't finished it.
Speaker 3: But this is worth noting, a vampire novel that pre
Speaker 3: dates Dracula. Yes, absolutely, Yeah, so Dracula wasn't the first
Speaker 3: wasn't even the first big one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. As we've discussed on the show before, Dracula as
Speaker 2: a literary work is not as old as a lot
Speaker 2: of people think it is, or may sort of casually
Speaker 2: think of it as being. You know, we offer mate,
Speaker 2: we just lumped Dracula in with Frankenstein, when in fact,
Speaker 2: you know, Frankenstein is an older work.
Speaker 3: Yeah. One of the weird things we've talked about is
Speaker 3: how Dracula was only a few decades old when Nosferatu
Speaker 3: the movie was made. Yeah, you know, it's like adapting
Speaker 3: a movie today from a novel published in the nineties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, crazy. All right, let's talk about the cast here.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna as I've done recently, I'm going to stick
Speaker 2: with the idea that if your character is the title
Speaker 2: of the film, even if you don't have top billing,
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about you first. And so that's
Speaker 2: going to be the case here with Alokarda. She was
Speaker 2: played by Tina Romero born nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 3: What a force of nature she is in this movie.
Speaker 3: She is fantastic and she is so scary, bringing lead,
Speaker 3: heavy intensity in the eyes. She has this this just
Speaker 3: burning stare where you feel like she could she could
Speaker 3: literally set you on fire with her eyes, and turns
Speaker 3: out she can't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there is, Yeah, she's able to. It's just
Speaker 2: such a great performance, and she's able to channel this
Speaker 2: feeling that Yeah, I mean, to a certain extent, it
Speaker 2: is like she is a saint, or the inverse of
Speaker 2: a saint. You know, she has access to different information
Speaker 2: about reality. Truth is shining through her, and at times
Speaker 2: that truth may be like gentle and reassuring and innocent.
Speaker 2: Other times it may be shocking and horrifying and more
Speaker 2: than you can take. And so yeah, I mean, you
Speaker 2: really have to see it, of course to really understand
Speaker 2: everything we're talking about here. But but yeah, she's She's
Speaker 2: not like just a pure like evil character. It's not like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's like if you think this is a demonic possession film,
Speaker 2: and to a certain extent it is. This is not
Speaker 2: a character that is possessed by a demon and is
Speaker 2: snarling and cussing and so forth exorcist style the whole time.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know another thing I was mentioning to you
Speaker 3: off Mike that I think is really interesting about this performance.
Speaker 3: I think Tina Romero was something like twenty six twenty
Speaker 3: seven when she made this film, But she really manages
Speaker 3: to pull off a particular type of scary energy, which
Speaker 3: is like a terrifying, unhinged teenager energy. She's not just
Speaker 3: able to create a scary presence with her facial expressions
Speaker 3: and all that, but she she is scary in a
Speaker 3: particular way, in the way that like teenagers or young
Speaker 3: people can be scary to old people. Do you know
Speaker 3: what I'm talking about?
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yeah, my
Speaker 2: child is thirteen now, so and all their friends are
Speaker 2: like twelve or thirteen or fourteen. So yeah, I totally
Speaker 2: get this.
Speaker 3: Five.
Speaker 2: Who are these creatures?
Speaker 3: Yeah, beyond just the direct threat of you know, satanic
Speaker 3: magic being invoked and you know, to burn your body
Speaker 3: or something, there is also just this generational mysteriousness.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we'll have a lot to say about Tina
Speaker 2: Romero's performance. It's a dual role as well. She also
Speaker 2: plays Alakarta's mother in the beginning, and she's just terrific throughout. Now.
Speaker 2: The love interest for Alucarta is the character Justine, played
Speaker 2: by Susanna Kamini. I wasn't able to find any data
Speaker 2: on this actress's age, when she was born and so forth,
Speaker 2: but she was in all three of Montezuma's nineteen seventies
Speaker 2: horror films, as well as To Kill a Stranger. She
Speaker 2: was active through at least eighty six or perhaps two
Speaker 2: thousand and seven, depending on which movie database you're looking at,
Speaker 2: And it's difficult to compare her performance to Romero's because
Speaker 2: Alokarta is, you know, the title character and is such
Speaker 2: an intense character. But Justine, who is based here to
Speaker 2: at least to a certain extent, on Dussad's Justine, is
Speaker 2: an intentionally more subdued character. So you know, you can't.
Speaker 2: It's apples and oranges to a certain extent. But I
Speaker 2: think Comeni does a fine job and she gets to
Speaker 2: shine in a different way during the final act.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. The character of Justine is more passive
Speaker 3: in being pulled along by the magic of Elakarda.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, let's come back to Claudio Brook then.
Speaker 2: Claudio Brook also has a dual role, a delightfully dual
Speaker 2: role in this picture, playing both the rational doctor Ozak
Speaker 2: and a romani hunchback who also may be a satyr
Speaker 2: and may also be an agent of the devil or
Speaker 2: the devil himself. It's unknown.
Speaker 3: Maybe. I mean he is a goat man in his
Speaker 3: hunchback form, he's just a goat. Yes, give him full
Speaker 3: billy goat shaped beard. And yeah, does he have horns? Almost, well,
Speaker 3: we don't really see. And there's hair, there's at least
Speaker 3: hair going on the Yeah, there's a there's very curly hair.
Speaker 3: So if there are horns, maybe they're underneath the curls.
Speaker 3: The goat comparison in his human form is not subtle.
Speaker 2: No, this and is not a subtle performance. Yeah, for
Speaker 2: fans of like mystery science theater, and weird films. This
Speaker 2: is kind of like imagine if Torgo were played by
Speaker 2: an award winning actor that has essentially classically trained and
Speaker 2: highly regarded. Yeah, so yeah, we've talked about Claudio Brooke
Speaker 2: at least in passing on the show before. Fantastic actor
Speaker 2: of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. He has a
Speaker 2: small role in The Devil's Reign which we briefly talked about,
Speaker 2: which we covered on the show before, and we briefly
Speaker 2: talked about Claudio Brook but it's not a very big part.
Speaker 2: But here, yeah, we get to see him just do
Speaker 2: a whole lot more. Here he gets to play both
Speaker 2: sides of the gothic horror coin, you know, the straight
Speaker 2: laced protagonist and also an Asian of chaos. Again, Claudio
Speaker 2: Brook really got to run wild in Montezuma's previous film,
Speaker 2: The Mansion of Madness, and his other horror films horror
Speaker 2: and or sci fi and certainly in some cases Luca
Speaker 2: films included sixty two's Neutron, The Atomic Superman versus The
Speaker 2: Death Robots, sixty three's Neutron versus Doctor Carante, sixty threes,
Speaker 2: Santo in The Wax Museum. So yes, he did get
Speaker 2: to lock up with Santo. I don't know if they
Speaker 2: actually lock up, and I haven't seen this one yet,
Speaker 2: but I'm excited to at some point. He's in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight's The Bees, and he's also in Guierramel del
Speaker 2: Toro's Chronos from nineteen ninety two. In that film, Del
Speaker 2: Toro fans might remember him, he plays the aging deter
Speaker 2: di la Guardia, who is seeking the Kronos device in
Speaker 2: order to prolong his life.
Speaker 3: He's the villain, not the protagonist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's the villain in that. He's his Hinchman slash.
Speaker 2: I Believe's son is Ron Pearlman's character. So he's constantly
Speaker 2: like brating him and hitting him with a cane and
Speaker 2: like give me that Chronis device.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: So Del Toro a lot of praise on Claudio Brooke,
Speaker 2: including in that I Believe Again two thousand and two
Speaker 2: interview on the Mondo disc, here pointing out that he
Speaker 2: had an almost mechanical perfection in his craft, something that
Speaker 2: he compared to actors of the British school. Just a
Speaker 2: solid professional. Outside of a smattering of horror and Luca films,
Speaker 2: Claudier was a collaborator of the avant garde surrealist director
Speaker 2: Luis Bounel, appearing in the sixty five film Simon of
Speaker 2: the Desert and sixty two is the Exterminating Angel, and
Speaker 2: I believe some others as well from that director. He
Speaker 2: appeared in a variety of major Golden Age Mexican productions
Speaker 2: as well as international productions like seventy six's Return of
Speaker 2: a Man Called Horse, eighty nine's Romero, eighty nine's Licensed
Speaker 2: to Kill, nineteen nineties Revenge that's a Tony Scott film,
Speaker 2: and nineteen ninety one's One Man's War. Also, like I say,
Speaker 2: this is a guy who had some big roles. He
Speaker 2: played Jesus Christ in at least one Mexican reduction, like
Speaker 2: I think it was a TV mini series that sort
Speaker 2: of thing, so a major name in Mexico. And also
Speaker 2: he had a you know, there's certainly a fair amount
Speaker 2: of international prestige as well.
Speaker 3: Wait, was the License to Kill he was in? That
Speaker 3: was the James Bond movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he was in License to Kill well, which
Speaker 2: I have not seen in so long. I don't know
Speaker 2: who he plays. I imagine it's a relatively minor supporting character,
Speaker 2: but I yeah, I don't remember him in that.
Speaker 3: That's the James Bond revenge movie where he's not really
Speaker 3: on an official mission, but he's on a revenge quest
Speaker 3: against I think it's Robert Dove playing a drug kingpin
Speaker 3: who feeds Felix lighter to a shark.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, this is the one. The main thing I
Speaker 2: remember is is what Anthony Zerba is in that as well.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and gets blown up and an air compressor
Speaker 2: or something, which is a pretty horrific scene at the time.
Speaker 2: Benicio del Toro is in that film as well, and
Speaker 2: I don't remember him at all.
Speaker 3: He's one of the villain's main hinchmen. He gets gruesomely
Speaker 3: thrown into a grinder that's like chopping up bricks of cocaine.
Speaker 2: Oh man. Yeah, it's been so long since I saw that,
Speaker 2: probably a little too young, and I haven't seen it
Speaker 2: since because it's a I remember being pretty gritty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been a while, but I think gritty is
Speaker 3: the right word. It is famously a kind of nastier,
Speaker 3: more down to earth James Bond than a lot of
Speaker 3: other films of that period.
Speaker 2: Oh and I also mentioned that the character Doctor Olazak
Speaker 2: has a daughter named Danelia, and this character is played
Speaker 2: by actress Lily Garza, who would go on to be
Speaker 2: an Aerial Award winning TV director. All Right, let's get
Speaker 2: into some of the more supporting characters here. We also
Speaker 2: have the character of Father Lazaro, who we've already mentioned
Speaker 2: a little bit, played by David Silva, who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: seventeen through nineteen seventy six, a one time Aeriel Award
Speaker 2: winner for nineteen forty seven's Champion without a Crown. And
Speaker 2: speaking of the era, whereas I think I neglected to
Speaker 2: mention earlier that Tina Romero also was at least nominated
Speaker 2: I'm Sorry for award for nineteen eighty one's The Great Waters.
Speaker 2: The Aerie Awards are essentially like the Oscars of Mexican cinema,
Speaker 2: So anyway, David Silva won the award in nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 2: and it was nominated three more times, including for his
Speaker 2: role as the Colonel in nineteen seventy two's al Topo.
Speaker 2: I do not remember I've seen al Topo. It's been
Speaker 2: so many years. I don't remember his character.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't either, but he.
Speaker 2: Was an opera singer and actor with some you know,
Speaker 2: shows up in a number of different bits of weird cinema.
Speaker 2: He's in the Mansion of Madness. He's in Jo Roowski's
Speaker 2: Holy Mountain from seventy three. He was in nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: two's The Brainiac, which we previously discussed on the show.
Speaker 3: I think of who is he.
Speaker 2: He's one of the inspectors. I don't know if he
Speaker 2: wears a flamethrower or not. He one of the less
Speaker 2: notable characters, or at least in my viewing. And he's
Speaker 2: also in nineteen sixty eight's The Batwoman, which we have
Speaker 2: not covered on the show yet but I think is
Speaker 2: maybe kind of inevitable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll end up there sooner or later.
Speaker 2: Now I don't know for certain, but I have heavily
Speaker 2: suspect that while Claudio Brooke and Tina Romero are delivering
Speaker 2: all of their English language lines themselves, Silva feels like
Speaker 2: he might have been dubbed here, Like his voice feels
Speaker 2: very voice overy here. You know, it's like Lupita no.
Speaker 3: Exactly, kind yeah, strong, Yeah, that is what it feels
Speaker 3: like to me.
Speaker 2: Also, yeah, well, his physical performance, which is still great,
Speaker 2: is you know, he's more of a sweating, self hating
Speaker 2: lump of religious zeal And. I don't know, I just
Speaker 2: I could be completely wrong on this. I'm not familiar
Speaker 2: enough with his work, but it feels like maybe he's dubbed.
Speaker 3: In English here. I love how they don't really set
Speaker 3: us up for the first flagellation scene. You just don't
Speaker 3: know that that's coming. And suddenly this guy and all
Speaker 3: the nuns are like with their habits and tunics pulled
Speaker 3: down and just whipping themselves are being whipped.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and not in a way that feels like it's
Speaker 2: supposed to be sexy.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, none at all. No, it's like it's
Speaker 3: gross and pathetic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about some of the other members of
Speaker 2: the cloth here and what bloodstained cloth it is. In
Speaker 2: this picture, we have Sister Angelica, who is ultimately in
Speaker 2: many ways, the more relatable member of the convent here
Speaker 2: and the nicest of the nuns. Yes, the nicest of
Speaker 2: the nuns. She's played by Tina French. Couldn't find any
Speaker 2: information about her birthday. Her other credits include nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: eight s Fando and Liss and nineteen ninety eight's Angel
Speaker 2: of Light. As of twenty twenty two, she was still
Speaker 2: active as an actress. But she has some really great
Speaker 2: scenes in.
Speaker 3: This Yeah, really great one where she as a she's
Speaker 3: like a preying nun and she begins levitating sweating blood
Speaker 3: and she delivers a lethal curse via prayer.
Speaker 2: Yes, pretty amazing. It's an awesome sequence. Now there's also
Speaker 2: Mother Superior played by Brigita Segeriskag. This is her only credit,
Speaker 2: so I couldn't find anything about this individual. Then we
Speaker 2: also have Sister Jermana, who I don't remember what Sister
Speaker 2: Jermana really gets into. She's I think involved in some
Speaker 2: dialogue scenes back and forth, and then she has a
Speaker 2: particular fate that we'll discuss. But she is played by
Speaker 2: Adriana Roel, who of nineteen thirty four through twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: We previously mentioned her because she played the werewolf's sister
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty five La Loba Ah okay, Yeah, and
Speaker 2: she herself was an Aeriel Award winning actress for nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine's Anna Cursa, and she also was in twenty
Speaker 2: fourteens She doesn't want to sleep alone. And then finally,
Speaker 2: the composer for this film was Anthony Gooffen. I wasn't
Speaker 2: able to find information about when he was born his
Speaker 2: dates either. This was his first credited score, but he'd
Speaker 2: follow up Alocarda with nineteen eighty two's Deadly Eyes, which,
Speaker 2: weirdly enough, is a Canadian killer rat movie produced by
Speaker 2: Hong Kong's Golden Harvest.
Speaker 3: That's going on the list.
Speaker 2: And he also did the score for Larry Cohen's The
Speaker 2: Stuff in nineteen eighty five, which weird film fans are
Speaker 2: probably rather familiar with, and his credits in lesser known
Speaker 2: films continue through about twenty twelve. The score here, I
Speaker 2: think it has some nice electronic weirdness and of course
Speaker 2: a lot of given the religious themes, you've got to
Speaker 2: have some electric organ in there, and so we have
Speaker 2: a lot of that going on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, solid soundscapes throughout.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and of course numerous other professionals, as is always
Speaker 2: the case, made this film possible. You know, the look
Speaker 2: of it is pretty intense and incredible, and that ranges
Speaker 2: from the costumes to the weird sets to the terrifying
Speaker 2: man on fire stunts that you find throughout the last
Speaker 2: act of the picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, well, is it time to talk about
Speaker 3: the plot let's do. It begins with the prologue, of course,
Speaker 3: where we see the birth of our title character, or
Speaker 3: not see the birth, we see the aftermath of the birth.
Speaker 2: That's right, and this is a great sequence that really
Speaker 2: sets the tone in many ways. Alakarta is born in
Speaker 2: a crypt that has all the trappings of a manger.
Speaker 2: It's a strange set already, You're just full of cobwebs, straw,
Speaker 2: green vines, ruined statues. So is this a place of
Speaker 2: death or birth or both? And then eventually we're gonna
Speaker 2: see baby Alakarta taken away by I don't know, an
Speaker 2: old Romani woman based on what we see later, or
Speaker 2: is this supposed to be a witch some sort of
Speaker 2: supernatural emissary Really hard to say at this point. And
Speaker 2: she's sending the child away to keep him from getting
Speaker 2: her And at first we might think, well him, who
Speaker 2: is she afraid of? Is it you know it is
Speaker 2: some sort of terrestrial force or no, is it something supernatural?
Speaker 2: And if it is supernatural, is Alocarda threatened by the devil?
Speaker 2: Or is Alacarta threatened by the Christian God?
Speaker 3: Good question? This is a cold open, by the way,
Speaker 3: This is like no credits or anything. He's just opened
Speaker 3: straight up on this setting that is, as you mentioned,
Speaker 3: weird in a number of ways. Like one thing is
Speaker 3: it seems to be maybe underground. It's certainly enclosed, but
Speaker 3: it's also overgrown on the inside with all these green plants.
Speaker 3: It's a little unnatural. Do you notice the contrasting statues
Speaker 3: all around, So like it's a mix of cultural symbols.
Speaker 3: Some things look like they could be consistent with Catholic tradition,
Speaker 3: Like I think maybe we see something that could be
Speaker 3: Virgin Mary statues. But then the camera wheels over to
Speaker 3: this statue up in the head of the room, which
Speaker 3: looks to me like the Great God Pan. It's like
Speaker 3: a youthful, shirtless male figure on top with what looks
Speaker 3: like goat legs or something on the bottom. Hard to
Speaker 3: say for sure. And then so the figure delivering the baby,
Speaker 3: I thought was a man made to look like really
Speaker 3: fairal looking, it is a figure wearing a pelt of
Speaker 3: furs with straw just fully woven into his hair.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was part of me was wondering if this
Speaker 2: is Claudio Brook once again. Yeah, like the general body
Speaker 2: form of the character would match Claudio Brook, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of tall and slim. But I couldn't find a
Speaker 2: good answer on this and could not positively id him
Speaker 2: in this role either.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, this is not the movie's fault, but I just
Speaker 3: had to note an association a Lukarta's mother here is
Speaker 3: wearing what looks like a green velvet with this white
Speaker 3: neck ruffle. And I'm sorry, but I couldn't help but
Speaker 3: be reminded of the wardrobe from the classic mid two
Speaker 3: thousand's Starburst commercial the berries and cream guy. I'm a
Speaker 3: little lad who loves berries and cream. She's dressed like
Speaker 3: that guy.
Speaker 2: I was not familiar with this at all. I had
Speaker 2: to look it up. Yeah, apparently this character is called
Speaker 2: little Lad and was played by a dancer and actor
Speaker 2: Jack Ferver.
Speaker 3: Anyway, in the scene, Alukarta's mother says, poor little creature.
Speaker 3: I won't be able to see Alukarta grow, but she
Speaker 3: must survive. Take her to the convent. Please promise me
Speaker 3: that you will protect her and don't let him take
Speaker 3: her away. That's what you were talking about?
Speaker 2: Him?
Speaker 3: Who is him? And then the merit the person there,
Speaker 3: swears and takes the baby away, and then there is
Speaker 3: some kind of magical confrontation Alukarta's mother still like, by
Speaker 3: the way, she's in not just a regular like we said,
Speaker 3: she was in straw, but not just straw on the
Speaker 3: floor in like a sunken pit in the middle of
Speaker 3: the room, on a bed of straw, and she faces
Speaker 3: up to look at the statue at the head of
Speaker 3: the room, which whether it's you know, the god Pan
Speaker 3: or something else. And then we hear otherworldly sounds, the
Speaker 3: fluttering of bat wings, a dry, rasping groan, and then
Speaker 3: she braces herself against the straw bed and she grimaces
Speaker 3: like she's getting prepared for a psychic battle. Her eyes
Speaker 3: grow wide. She screams, and then credits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that dry, raspy grown We're gonna hear that
Speaker 2: time and time again throughout the movie. Is this the
Speaker 2: presence sounds kind of like a like a zombie sound almost.
Speaker 2: Is it the presence of the infernal? Or is this,
Speaker 2: perversely like the presence of the divine? Uncertain?
Speaker 3: It reminds me of the rasping of the witch in Suspirit.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, good connection. Yeah, that's what it was reminding
Speaker 2: me of as well. All right, so from here we
Speaker 2: fast far fifteen years into the future. The year is
Speaker 2: I believe eighteen fifty and we have a new character, Justine,
Speaker 2: and she is arriving at a convent in Mexico following
Speaker 2: her pet parents' death.
Speaker 3: That's right, And there are a mix of feelings I
Speaker 3: would say generated by this scene. The visual environment of
Speaker 3: the convent is I think quite dingy and depressing. Justine
Speaker 3: is brought by wagon on this bare mud road outside
Speaker 3: and we can see the outer walls of the convent
Speaker 3: in broad daylight, and they seem to be just infinitely
Speaker 3: smudged with filth and neglect. And then all around the
Speaker 3: outside of the convent there are just people standing around
Speaker 3: apparently with nothing to do, as if they're like waiting
Speaker 3: for something. It just feels bad. But then on the
Speaker 3: other hand, the nun who welcomes Justine when she arrives,
Speaker 3: I think this is Sister Angelica, is very kind and warm,
Speaker 3: you know, she gives her a whole like, Justine, I'm
Speaker 3: so glad you've arrived. We've been expecting you. There's nothing
Speaker 3: to be afraid of. This is your home now. So
Speaker 3: she's very kind and helpful. But then again there are
Speaker 3: more unsettling elements, like the interior of the convent and
Speaker 3: the way all the nuns are dressed. You had something
Speaker 3: about that, didn't you.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean I think everybody who's ever watched
Speaker 2: this movie has something about this, because, Yeah, the interiors
Speaker 2: of the convent just straight up feel like a tomb.
Speaker 2: In the best of cases, they feel like a nicely
Speaker 2: like a tomb, or some somebody's at least open the window,
Speaker 2: and in their worst well, well we'll get to that
Speaker 2: in a minute. But then, yeah, the way the nuns
Speaker 2: are dressed, if you're expecting or picturing in your mind
Speaker 2: sort of traditional stereotypical nuns habits, that is not what's
Speaker 2: going on here. They are dressed in alarming habits that
Speaker 2: really resemble mummy rappings more than anything. And these rappings
Speaker 2: are like stained in places with what We're not sure
Speaker 2: exactly blood, it would seem, but also maybe perspiration, you know,
Speaker 2: are they stained with lust, suffering, you know, from intense emotion?
Speaker 2: Perhaps all of this. So the nuns themselves are presented
Speaker 2: as if entombed alive in a place, in this place,
Speaker 2: while their outfits betray their organic nature and their mortal longings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the nuns are like bloody, muddy mummies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, strange, Yeah, there is a yeah, a foulness to
Speaker 2: the way they're dressed.
Speaker 4: Ye.
Speaker 2: And and this is something, yeah that anytime you read
Speaker 2: anything about a lakarda someone they always bring this up
Speaker 2: because it is one of the most notable aspects of
Speaker 2: it and one that you know, ultimately we were just
Speaker 2: left to sort of puzzle and interpret.
Speaker 3: Okay, what the nuns look like is they look like
Speaker 3: mummies who are dressed, dressed in wrappings like mummies, but
Speaker 3: also with like a kind of you know, dress habit thing.
Speaker 3: And they all work in a meat processing plant and
Speaker 3: they haven't changed their bandages in a month.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I guess. And as we'll see. You know,
Speaker 2: part of it may be that they they routinely have
Speaker 2: to whip themselves for their mortal longings, and you know
Speaker 2: that's going to stain through. It's hard to get that
Speaker 2: out of your habits now.
Speaker 3: In this sequence we also meet a few other major
Speaker 3: characters we mentioned Justine and sister Angelica. There's also the
Speaker 3: mother Superior sister Jermana, and the doctor Osek and his daughter. Again.
Speaker 3: Doctor Otsek is played by Claudio Brooke, so he is
Speaker 3: there picking up his daughter Daniella, who is blind and
Speaker 3: we learn that she has been spending some time at
Speaker 3: the convent over the summer. I think they've been helping
Speaker 3: teach her how to do some things, and now she's
Speaker 3: returning home with her father. Sister Angelica shows Justine to
Speaker 3: her room, which is a small cell with a single
Speaker 3: window to the outside, and there are two beds, each
Speaker 3: with a cross on the wall over the head of
Speaker 3: the bed. Sister Angelica tells Justine to get some rest
Speaker 3: and that if she ever feels troubled or needs help,
Speaker 3: just call upon her and she'll be there. So Sister Angela,
Speaker 3: because she's sweet. But there's another bed in the room.
Speaker 3: So is Justine going to have her roommate? Oh, yes,
Speaker 3: she is. When she's left alone, Justine spends a moment
Speaker 3: looking at a locket containing photos of her mother and father,
Speaker 3: and then while she's admiring the photos, a figure blurs
Speaker 3: into focus from behind her. It is a young woman
Speaker 3: dressed all in black, with pale skin and long dark hair.
Speaker 3: This is Alukarda. She startles Justine and then introduces herself,
Speaker 3: and there's something notable about the velocity of interaction with Alukarda,
Speaker 3: like there's no timidness at the beginning, she just launches
Speaker 3: into relationship with Justine so fast, like they briefly bond
Speaker 3: over the fact that they're both orphans. But then Alucarda
Speaker 3: suddenly says, I have something to show you. So she
Speaker 3: runs to retrieve some thing from under her bed and
Speaker 3: she pulls something out, says, these are things I never
Speaker 3: show to anybody. They're secrets, and every day I find
Speaker 3: a new secret. What is it? It's stuff, Like ali
Speaker 3: Karta dumps out onto her bed a leather bag full
Speaker 3: of stuff. It contains what looks like pebbles, pieces of
Speaker 3: broken glass, flakes of metal, scraps of fabric, and just
Speaker 3: other little bits of trash, and she explains that each
Speaker 3: one of these objects is a secret. She says that
Speaker 3: these objects come to her. She says, it comes to me,
Speaker 3: and then she picks up one piece from this pile
Speaker 3: and says, this, for instance, it means I like you.
Speaker 3: And she puts the object in Justine's hand and then
Speaker 3: closes Justine's fingers around it, and Justine smiles. Then Alukarta
Speaker 3: says she'll show her another. So she holds out her
Speaker 3: hand and she empties this like she uncorks a black
Speaker 3: bottle and empties the black bottle onto her palm, and
Speaker 3: it's something alive. It's full of little writhing caterpillars or
Speaker 3: some other kind of insect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not not played for horror here, No, no, no.
Speaker 3: She she pours them out on her hand and then
Speaker 3: says this line that you identified, Rob. She says, do
Speaker 3: you know how small creatures love each other? I'll show you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I love this line. And again it's
Speaker 2: one of those where you just have to sort of
Speaker 2: think about it and interpret it. But for me, anyway,
Speaker 2: you know, this feels like like like like peak innocence
Speaker 2: in this film. So we in this, in this one line,
Speaker 2: we we sense Alocarta's enthusiasm, you know, for for the
Speaker 2: secrets of nature and wondrous things that exist on the
Speaker 2: small scale. And perhaps, you know, reading into this and
Speaker 2: thinking about what's to come in this film, maybe those
Speaker 2: they're on such a small scale that they avoid the
Speaker 2: attention of a larger world, of the adult world and
Speaker 2: also supernatural forces. Like maybe small things are allowed to
Speaker 2: love each other because they are too small for the
Speaker 2: devil or for God to care about them.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I like that reading I think that could
Speaker 3: be what he's meant there. Yeah, the small things are
Speaker 3: like they can they can avoid his gaze, you know,
Speaker 3: they can that they can get away with just living
Speaker 3: and loving as they want, as they want. Now, Alokarta says,
Speaker 3: I'll show you. I'll take you to the garden, to
Speaker 3: the woods. Everything is there, and she's just so intense,
Speaker 3: so fast, and then suddenly we're we're out there in nature.
Speaker 3: Alokarta and Justine are outside and Alocarta has picked up
Speaker 3: a piece of moss and she's holding it up for
Speaker 3: Justine to see, and on the moss are crawling two
Speaker 3: bright red mites.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess these are clover mites. And I like
Speaker 2: their inclusion here because anytime I've ever encountered these little
Speaker 2: guys or some related species and in the wild anyway,
Speaker 2: it always does feel like a little special minor miracle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so bright, so red. Justine's very she's I think,
Speaker 3: she says, I've never seen these before. They're so interesting.
Speaker 3: And then Alucarda says, it's one more secret. One is
Speaker 3: identical to the other, like an image in a mirror,
Speaker 3: like you and me. Then suddenly Halakarta is like more
Speaker 3: more and mores, let's find more secrets, and they start
Speaker 3: to run around in the woods, laughing madly, wrestling and
Speaker 3: tumbling in the grass, and it seems perhaps their relationship
Speaker 3: is already something more than friendship.
Speaker 2: It's like moving so fast, right right, These two are
Speaker 2: drawn to each other, and certainly Alokarta is drawn to Justine,
Speaker 2: and now their trajectory cannot be stopped.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But their happiness is interrupted by the somber clang
Speaker 3: of a funeral bell. They look down into the little
Speaker 3: ravines slightly below them, and they see a procession of
Speaker 3: figures in black carrying a coffin. It's a very creepy image,
Speaker 3: by the way, in the way that it's framed, especially
Speaker 3: because it's in broad daylight in this green lush is
Speaker 3: full of undergrowth. But these figures clad totally in black.
Speaker 3: I think you can't even see their faces, and they're
Speaker 3: carrying this coffin. So it's beautifully framed and unsettling. And
Speaker 3: Alucarda explains to Justine that this funeral is for another
Speaker 3: girl at the convent who died by suicide, and they
Speaker 3: say the nuns will bury her in unhallowed ground, and
Speaker 3: there's something sad about that. Justine says that funerals frighten her,
Speaker 3: but Alucarda does not seem afraid. She seems almost a
Speaker 3: little bit defiant, maybe a little bit excited, and she says,
Speaker 3: you have to die. Everyone has to die, but there
Speaker 3: can be happiness beyond death. So Alucarda and Justine continue
Speaker 3: running through the woods until they finally have an encounter
Speaker 3: with the hunchback. This is the character also played by
Speaker 3: Claudio Brooke, who's very goat like in appearance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is tremendous. It's such a contrast to the
Speaker 2: other care very broad, jesturelike performance at times, lanky arms,
Speaker 2: shuffling gait, speaking in an over the top accent, and
Speaker 2: in multiple languages, goat like, facial hair, shaggy pants. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the works.
Speaker 3: I mean, he should almost say at the beginning, I
Speaker 3: am known by many names. Like he sort of pops
Speaker 3: up out of nowhere and startles them while they're running
Speaker 3: around in the woods. And yeah, he's very goat like.
Speaker 3: He's got these things dangling off him, that jingle when
Speaker 3: he walks. I like that detail. As you said, he
Speaker 3: speaks many languages, including I caught pieces of French and
Speaker 3: of German and perhaps other things too, and when they
Speaker 3: first meet this guy, they have different reactions. Justine is
Speaker 3: frightened by him and she wants to run away, but
Speaker 3: al Lukarta is like, no, I like this guy, and
Speaker 3: she returns his smile and she convinces Justine that they
Speaker 3: should follow him. She says he won't harm us, and
Speaker 3: as the going along, he advertises all kinds of services.
Speaker 3: He tells them that he can let them know people's
Speaker 3: secrets and he can sell them an amulet, which is
Speaker 3: a charm against demons quote, which are running around these
Speaker 3: running around like wolves in these woods. So I like
Speaker 3: how it actually quite true to many different theologies and
Speaker 3: religious traditions around the world. This is a demon offering
Speaker 3: to protect them against demons.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they followed the hunchback to his camp, where they
Speaker 3: meet other people from his group, including a woman who
Speaker 3: reads Justine's palm and tells her fortune, or at least
Speaker 3: she tries to. After one look, she says, I see nothing,
Speaker 3: only shadows and darkness. And there's also some feuding between
Speaker 3: the two different main people in the Romani group. Here,
Speaker 3: the hunchback and the fortune teller insult each other's services.
Speaker 3: Like the fortune teller says, he'll tell you only lies,
Speaker 3: and the hunchback says the fortune teller, He's like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, what she sees in your palm is just
Speaker 3: going to be her own dreams backwards, and the hunchback
Speaker 3: tells Alucarda that he knows the secrets of alchemy and
Speaker 3: he can transform dust into precious stones. And then he says,
Speaker 3: either stones or souls, I couldn't tell which one, transform
Speaker 3: those into never imagined dreams. Ooh, and he also offers
Speaker 3: Alucarta a magic knife and gives this very cryptic speech.
Speaker 3: It was kind of hard for me to understand what
Speaker 3: this connects to in the film, but I like the
Speaker 3: ambiguity there. He says, I see your dream clearly, your
Speaker 3: past and future. You have come from the dew in
Speaker 3: the forest, and there they will be waiting for you.
Speaker 2: Who is they?
Speaker 3: Strange creatures they are, and you must take care if
Speaker 3: it obsesses the young lady, and I think it must.
Speaker 3: Here I am, and here is my box of charms.
Speaker 3: If the Ladyship wishes I shall make her free from
Speaker 3: such a dream, then if the dream should come true,
Speaker 3: I should be expecting her very cryptic, very yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean very hard to paraphrase what he's actually saying there,
Speaker 3: though at the same time it's almost like the subtextual
Speaker 3: implications are very clear, and those are It's like he's
Speaker 3: making her some kind of offer, but she's going to
Speaker 3: owe him something in return. Now, Alukarta is shaken by this,
Speaker 3: but by what unclear. So she and Justine run away
Speaker 3: and they dash together through the forest until they come
Speaker 3: to a ruined palace or castle of some kind, and
Speaker 3: once again, Justine, this is a common kind of difference here.
Speaker 3: Justine is frightened by this place and she wants to
Speaker 3: go back home, but Alucarda is like, no, no, let's
Speaker 3: go inside. She finds it beautiful and somehow very familiar,
Speaker 3: as if she's been here before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the exterior here is so tremendous. It's like
Speaker 2: a stone sculpturing, crusted edifice in disrepair, draped all over
Speaker 2: with lengths of blood stained colored cloths, you know, almost
Speaker 2: brown red, almost brown, you know. And inside, of course,
Speaker 2: where you're gonna find dust, bones, cobwebs, ruins, and ultimately
Speaker 2: the viewer will recognize the very crypt where Elocarda was born.
Speaker 3: Right, and this place is radioactive with magic. She says,
Speaker 3: I can hear voices from the past. I feel as
Speaker 3: if I've been here before. One can live eternally instead
Speaker 3: of turning into a pile of dust? Are you afraid
Speaker 3: of dying again? With Alokarta, these just the frantic, almost
Speaker 3: kind of stream of consciousness feed the sudden subject changes
Speaker 3: one sentence to another. They don't always seem to follow.
Speaker 3: But she asked Justine, are you afraid of dying? And
Speaker 3: Justine says, yes, everyone is. But Alucarda says, I mean
Speaker 3: dying loving each other, dying together so we may live
Speaker 3: as one forever, the same blood always flowing through our veins.
Speaker 3: And then Alucarda caresses Justine's face and it turns more tender,
Speaker 3: though it's a little it's a little bit threatening and
Speaker 3: tender at the same time. Alucarda is so much, she says, Darling, Darling, Justine,
Speaker 3: I live in you. Would you die for me? I
Speaker 3: love you? So I've never been in love with anyone
Speaker 3: and never shall and let's unless it's with you. And
Speaker 3: Justine is I think she She reciprocates the feeling in
Speaker 3: a way, but she's also overwhelmed and afraid, and Alucarda says,
Speaker 3: the time is very near when you will love me
Speaker 3: as much as I love you. You may think me
Speaker 3: cruel and selfish, but love is always selfish. Don't you
Speaker 3: know how jealous I am? You must love me to death. Wow,
Speaker 3: it's great stuff. I mean, Justine is terrified, understandably, but
Speaker 3: Alucarta is in a state of ecstasy, and she's sort
Speaker 3: of floating around the room almost I mean not literally.
Speaker 3: There will there will be some of that in a bit,
Speaker 3: but she says she she remembers a time when she
Speaker 3: was wounded and nearly died, and then she just pivots
Speaker 3: right away from that. She says that Justine has to
Speaker 3: swear a pact with her that if we ever depart
Speaker 3: from this life, we shall do it together. And Justine agrees,
Speaker 3: but with passive phrasing, she says, all right, if this
Speaker 3: makes you happy, And then a Lukarta pulls out a knife,
Speaker 3: the magic knife, to draw blood with. But then she
Speaker 3: gets distracted and looks down at their feet and first says,
Speaker 3: look look at this coffin, and they see the name
Speaker 3: on the coffin. It is the name Lucy Wes westenra
Speaker 3: I think it is always is it Westerna or Westinra,
Speaker 3: whatever it is. That is the name of the character
Speaker 3: Lucy from the novel Dracula. The you know, Mina's friend Lucy,
Speaker 3: who is if you're not familiar with the story, she
Speaker 3: is the first person in England who goes through this
Speaker 3: gradual transformation into vampire thrall. You know, the Dracula visits
Speaker 3: her on subsequent on, you know, a series of nights,
Speaker 3: and she gradually dies and then turns into a vampire.
Speaker 3: But this character Lucy, we don't get that in this
Speaker 3: movie at all. Is the name is the only reference.
Speaker 3: And so it's this coffin with Lucy Westenra written on it.
Speaker 3: They say she died years ago, and Alukarta has the idea,
Speaker 3: let's swear by her again. Justine is afraid, but Alucarta is.
Speaker 3: She can't be stopped. She's like a bulldozer. She just
Speaker 3: throws the coffin open and then they see this mold mummy, disgusting, sunken, flattened,
Speaker 3: gray mask of rotten death. And the moment the coffin
Speaker 3: is opened, it unleashes some kind of sonic attack. The otherworldly,
Speaker 3: demonic rasping from the prologue comes back. Remember when Alukarta's
Speaker 3: mother was laying on the pile of hay and there
Speaker 3: was the rasping from the statue. Now we hear the
Speaker 3: rasping again and it is affecting the characters. It seems
Speaker 3: to be causing immense stabbing, psychic pain in Alucarda and Justine,
Speaker 3: and they scream and they run away. Do you have
Speaker 3: a do you have a take on all this stuff
Speaker 3: that's just happened.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't have I don't have what what
Speaker 2: feels like a clear read on it. But I mean,
Speaker 2: on one hand, it's like this they're occult bonding, got
Speaker 2: a little out of hand, and they maybe bit off
Speaker 2: a little more than they could chew. That's that's one interpretation.
Speaker 2: And then once actually presented with death in the form
Speaker 2: of this body, it is overwhelming or is it in
Speaker 2: fact psychically spiritually overwhelming? And this is also brought on
Speaker 2: by the various magical pacts that they are already dealing
Speaker 2: with here, but it does it is certainly a turning point.
Speaker 3: Yes, So the two of them go back to the
Speaker 3: convent and then the next big scene we get with
Speaker 3: them is a scene where I guess it's Sunday morning,
Speaker 3: and everybody's at chapel. They're they're sitting in the chapel
Speaker 3: for a church service. That's like the best sermon of
Speaker 3: all time in the best chapel of all time.
Speaker 2: Oh my God, Yes, the cryptlike heart of the con
Speaker 2: I guess where the death shrouded nuns gather to hear
Speaker 2: the tyrannical, threatening and domineering sermons of Father Lazaro. Here
Speaker 2: to remind you about that God is the one who
Speaker 2: can sends you to hell, that all your sins are
Speaker 2: going to wind you up in hell, and then the
Speaker 2: devil wants to possess you body and soul.
Speaker 3: Yeah, can I read part of the sermon? He says
Speaker 3: the devil this is the very first thing we hear.
Speaker 3: By the way, nothing leading into this. The devil uses
Speaker 3: the body of the person he wants to master. He
Speaker 3: uses the organs of that body for his own pleasure,
Speaker 3: for the performing of such feats far above the capacity, strength,
Speaker 3: or agility of the person thus possessed. So it's like
Speaker 3: a very I don't know, not like wisdom or values oriented.
Speaker 3: It's just like mechanically discussing the powers of the devil
Speaker 3: and how he will use your Organs, yes, and then
Speaker 3: he's describing to them in exquisite detail how they are
Speaker 3: all going to burn in hell forever. The wrath of
Speaker 3: Satan has no mercy repent. And this does lead to
Speaker 3: just an outpouring of you know, crying out for God's mercy,
Speaker 3: people kind of screaming and jumping up in agony and
Speaker 3: terror and all that.
Speaker 2: And we already discussed the state of the nuns and
Speaker 2: their habits. But the chapel here too is just downright
Speaker 2: oppressive and grotesque. So hundreds of partially melted candles line
Speaker 2: the altar beneath numerous effigies of the crucified Christ, effigies
Speaker 2: that dol Green in that book The Mexican The Mexican
Speaker 2: Cinema of Darkness, describes as having the air of an abatoir.
Speaker 2: And mean, it's like hung meat above the altar. For me,
Speaker 2: they brought to mind the sixteenth century Eisenheim altarpiece. This
Speaker 2: is the one that shows like the suffering of Christ,
Speaker 2: as if Christ is diseased. But these just, I mean,
Speaker 2: this is a different message entirely. It's as if this
Speaker 2: is a place where death in torment or worship just
Speaker 2: a nightmare image here and perhaps one of the film's
Speaker 2: most direct visual message is a place of the Disney
Speaker 2: spirit where the flesh dies and rots.
Speaker 3: I think one of the things to really emphasize. You
Speaker 3: did mention this, but the multitude of crucifixes. So it's
Speaker 3: not a chapel with one big crucifix at the top.
Speaker 3: There's there are dozens of crucified Christ's all just hanging
Speaker 3: there in like a in rose almost. It's like stadium
Speaker 3: seating of crucifixes ap at the top of the above
Speaker 3: the altar. Yeah, yeah, and this is what you're talking
Speaker 3: about with that that abatoar feeling. It's like just you know,
Speaker 3: rows and rows of hung meat, but they're all crucified Jesus'.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as if one sacrifice, one death was not enough,
Speaker 2: but it's instead endless sacrifices, endless deaths are necessary. So
Speaker 2: just just such an overbearing scene. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3: So I mentioned that in the middle of the sermon,
Speaker 3: it it becomes so terrifying and painful that the nuns
Speaker 3: and the girls of the orphanage are like screaming for
Speaker 3: mercy and they're like no, no, no, I repent. And
Speaker 3: in the middle of all this frenzy, Justine passes out
Speaker 3: and falls unconscious on the floor. So she's unconscious and
Speaker 3: she has taken to her room to recover. Alucarda is
Speaker 3: left alone with her to watch over her good idea.
Speaker 3: So once the nuns have left the room, Alucarda says
Speaker 3: to her, monsters, monsters, they have done this to you,
Speaker 3: yet you did not tell our secret. I have heard
Speaker 3: the voices again, Justine, And then she describes how the
Speaker 3: voices of the past came to her again. It's this
Speaker 3: evocative description where they're coming out of the woods. They're
Speaker 3: in the branches, high in the tops of the trees,
Speaker 3: and the voices made everything clear to her. She says,
Speaker 3: there's no one left but you and me, Just you
Speaker 3: and me, Justine. We will make them pay bit by
Speaker 3: bit all that has been taken from us. And I'm
Speaker 3: wondering what this refers to here. I think you can
Speaker 3: make an argument that they certainly live in a generally
Speaker 3: oppressive and repressive culture and situation. I mean, we just
Speaker 3: saw this terrifying sermon. But then again, they haven't like narratively,
Speaker 3: there hasn't been a specific thing that has been taken
Speaker 3: from them so far, unless there's something I'm forgetting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unless they're referring to things that have been taken
Speaker 2: from them in life, their parents and so forth, exactly. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: But for the most part, like it's oppressive. As had
Speaker 2: a sequence in the chapel is it's like, oh, Justine
Speaker 2: passed out, take her to her the room and she
Speaker 2: can have a little time out there, like prop her
Speaker 2: up and make her watch.
Speaker 3: Then alu Karta really gets going. She begins calling out
Speaker 3: these names of what are presumably demons. I didn't recognize
Speaker 3: a lot of the names, and they didn't show up
Speaker 3: in the subtitles I was watching. But one of the
Speaker 3: names she says is Astoroth, which I know is a
Speaker 3: classic one of the names that appears in these manuals
Speaker 3: of demonology. So she's calling out Astoroth, know, Secundus, whatever,
Speaker 3: whatever all the names are, and she ends up spinning
Speaker 3: around in a dizzy mania, screaming Satan, Satan, Satan, and
Speaker 3: she knocks Justine to the ground. So here, I guess
Speaker 3: we could pause and talk a bit about what is
Speaker 3: happening to Alukarda and different ways you could interpret this film.
Speaker 3: I guess at the top level you could ask is
Speaker 3: this like true demonic possession or could this be taken
Speaker 3: as hallucination and delusion. I know that tension is played
Speaker 3: with in some nunsploitation films or films that you know,
Speaker 3: have to do with religious mania in a you know,
Speaker 3: pre modern Catholic context. I really don't think that is
Speaker 3: an option we can debate in this film. It's just clear,
Speaker 3: especially through later events in the movie, that this is
Speaker 3: true demonic possession and the devil is real and the
Speaker 3: demons are getting.
Speaker 2: Y Yeah, or at least at the very least, the
Speaker 2: supernatural element is a reality.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like that seems to become clear as clear as anything
Speaker 2: is towards the end of this picture.
Speaker 3: But there is a second level of questions that we
Speaker 3: can ask about it. If this is demonic possession, what
Speaker 3: is causing it? It almost seems overdetermined, like there are
Speaker 3: too many different things you can point to being like, well,
Speaker 3: that is the cause. There's several things like was al
Speaker 3: U Karda born with some kind of demonic curse that
Speaker 3: is suggested by the prologue that something is hunting her
Speaker 3: the moment she's born, or did an entity attack her
Speaker 3: or make her vulnerable at a specific point, for a
Speaker 3: specific reason. We've almost got multiple scenes pointing to that
Speaker 3: as well. For one thing, the curse seems to be
Speaker 3: linked to her love for Justine, like that, you know,
Speaker 3: they're being sort of demonically persecuted for their love for
Speaker 3: each other. That seems like a valid interpretation. The other
Speaker 3: thing is like, did she invite this by her interactions
Speaker 3: with the goat man and wanting the magic knife and
Speaker 3: all that. Did they invite this when they opened the
Speaker 3: coffin of Lucy and let out that rasp. It seems
Speaker 3: like maybe the answer to all these questions is yes,
Speaker 3: which is just more confusing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the film isn't very It's like, this is not
Speaker 2: one of those films where Alocarda is eventually going to
Speaker 2: be like Alucarda is no more, there is only Zuol
Speaker 2: or something like you're even wondering to what extent she
Speaker 2: is truly possessed by some other force or is this
Speaker 2: just pure Alucarda then, and then on top of that
Speaker 2: questions of hallucination and delusion or supernatural reality. The film manages,
Speaker 2: you know, through its more surreal aspects, to kind of
Speaker 2: have it both ways, which I think is one of
Speaker 2: its strengths. Doyle Green in his book comments on this.
Speaker 2: He argues, quote, it's not that the subjective and objective
Speaker 2: moments are ambiguous and therefore demand clarification, but rather that
Speaker 2: the scenes become subjective and objective at the same time,
Speaker 2: and thus any clarification becomes impossible. And so he ultimately
Speaker 2: argues for like, just the pure evocative power of images
Speaker 2: in this film as being like really like the main feature.
Speaker 3: If I'm understanding him correctly, I agree with that. Then
Speaker 3: it's not that it is just one way and the
Speaker 3: film does a poor job of explaining which way it is.
Speaker 3: It's more like it is being definitely indicated that it
Speaker 3: is multiple ways at the same time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And to.
Speaker 3: Expand on that, let me go back on something I
Speaker 3: said a minute ago. I think when you sort of
Speaker 3: contradicted me, you were right that it's not necessarily that
Speaker 3: it's definitely demon possession. But there are elements of the
Speaker 3: movie where if you take them at face value, it's
Speaker 3: definitely magic, but it's not. But like, where is the
Speaker 3: magic coming from? You suggested there's there's the we have
Speaker 3: the demon interpretation, but you also suggested pure alu Karta
Speaker 3: and some things point to pure Alukarta.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like eventually she's gonna make people burst into flames,
Speaker 2: as we've been alluding to. Is it hell fire working
Speaker 2: through her? Is she possessed by a demon? Or is
Speaker 2: it more like and it's often compared to you know,
Speaker 2: carry or something. Is this just like psychic powers of Alukarta?
Speaker 2: You know what's going on? We can't decide one way
Speaker 2: or another.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's where I agree. We get indications going
Speaker 3: in both directions. Now, one indication that it is external
Speaker 3: outside forces is something that's about to happen here, which
Speaker 3: is the ritual scene. So right after Alukarta first seems
Speaker 3: possessed or whatever it is and starts calling out the
Speaker 3: names of demons, we almost like ascend into another realm
Speaker 3: of reality where it's like you're in a dream sort of.
Speaker 3: The lights change on the scene, and now some of
Speaker 3: the walls in the room are gone, and the goat
Speaker 3: man comes in.
Speaker 2: Oh god, this moment where the goat man reappears right
Speaker 2: out of the shadows.
Speaker 3: Yes, amazing. So it's like we're as if we're in
Speaker 3: a dream, suddenly going straight out of this moment of
Speaker 3: what appears to be objective reality. The Hunchback appears. He
Speaker 3: again offers the knife to Alucarda, the magic knife, and
Speaker 3: Alucarda says, we shall make a pact and we shall
Speaker 3: make them pay, and the Hunchback says, yes, we shall
Speaker 3: make them pay. And the Hunchback then calls down rain
Speaker 3: and thunder from the sky, which appear on command, while
Speaker 3: Alucarda calls out again the names of the nine Kings
Speaker 3: of Hell. And now the thunder and the lightning are cracking.
Speaker 3: There is fog billowing all around, and suddenly Alucarda and
Speaker 3: Justine Nil facing one another, naked and entranced with evil magic.
Speaker 3: And it's this, it's this blood bond they are creating
Speaker 3: with each other of love and violence, where they cut
Speaker 3: each other's skin, taste each other's blood, and then kiss
Speaker 3: with their blood mingled on their lips. And the Hunchback
Speaker 3: is presiding over this whole ritual like a priest of evil,
Speaker 3: and he says, you shall blend into one another and
Speaker 3: then blend into me. It's like infinite love, infinite satan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, satanic marriage ritual really yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: And then from here the characters have already moved into
Speaker 3: this weird anti reality dream state, and they seem to
Speaker 3: progress even further out of the scene, out of the
Speaker 3: real basis of the scene, into some kind of cosmic
Speaker 3: meeting or union with a witch's coven, including the fortune
Speaker 3: teller from earlier, I believe, and it's her and all
Speaker 3: of these other people who we don't know who these
Speaker 3: people are, but they're these people naked in the forest,
Speaker 3: dancing in a circle with fires all around, praising the
Speaker 3: demons who give them power and liberty. And then finally
Speaker 3: a figure appears between Justine and Alukarta in full goat form,
Speaker 3: now no longer just a man who looks like a goat,
Speaker 3: but just a goat head a bapphamet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah and yeah. He moves among them, encourages them
Speaker 2: to kiss, and also encourages the orgiastic rights that begin
Speaker 2: to take place all around him on the grass.
Speaker 3: Some parts of this are staged in a very funny way,
Speaker 3: by the way, like all the witches are out there,
Speaker 3: you know, getting busy, and the and the devil figure
Speaker 3: is like, no that here, let me show you how
Speaker 3: I have sex.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of like nuzzling their hair, like coming up,
Speaker 2: like musting their hair up a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, do that there. Yeah, yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 3: it seems to be a celebration of Satanic libertinism.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then at the same time we cut back
Speaker 2: to Sister Angelica in her room.
Speaker 3: This was the thing that really like changed because you know,
Speaker 3: we've seen movies with devil worship before, we've seen scenes
Speaker 3: kind of like this. This is the thing where it
Speaker 3: gets really different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because Sister Angelica is back there and she in
Speaker 2: her room praying just fervently for Alokarda's soul. I believe
Speaker 2: it's Salikarda she's praying for specifically, maybe Justina's maybe just
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I can't remember which girl, or if
Speaker 2: it's both girls she's praying for. But oh, she is
Speaker 2: praying so hard and also kind of imagining the sort
Speaker 2: of things that they might be getting up to and
Speaker 2: to it. You could even interpret it as if she
Speaker 2: is imagining the black mass that is that we just
Speaker 2: saw and are seeing and are cut with this scene.
Speaker 2: And so she prays that God protects the protect them,
Speaker 2: and prays so hard that blood begins to see I
Speaker 2: think first from her nostril and or her eye, and
Speaker 2: then it's eventually just blood is coming out through her
Speaker 2: pores until finally she succeeds in convincing God. So it
Speaker 2: would seem to strike one of the witches dead with
Speaker 2: like a gory smite to the next so we don't
Speaker 2: see the hand of God, we don't see a thunderbolt.
Speaker 2: She's praying. She's praying, and then one of the witches
Speaker 2: is just the main witch, falls to the ground with
Speaker 2: this bloody gash in her neck.
Speaker 4: Dead.
Speaker 3: She invokes a death curse from God.
Speaker 2: Yes, and then we cut back to her. She's levitating,
Speaker 2: just exuberant in her room with this like weird light
Speaker 2: plane of light coming through the windows. Oh, it's so weird.
Speaker 2: And this is what Angelica has up to this point
Speaker 2: been one of our more you know, seemingly well meaning
Speaker 2: and relatable characters. She's the good nun, remember, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: And but here she has prayed with like such self
Speaker 2: destructive intensity, you know, killing a stranger out in the world,
Speaker 2: but also like blood flowing out of her face to
Speaker 2: do so this one, this scene is amazing.
Speaker 3: And that is the end of part one of the film.
Speaker 3: I guess you could say the end of the first act.
Speaker 3: And it transitions after this to the second part. Maybe
Speaker 3: we'll be a little bit more summary in our discussions
Speaker 3: from here on. But one of the big inciting incidents
Speaker 3: in the second act here is the scene in the
Speaker 3: school room where we have Justine and al Ukarda sitting
Speaker 3: in the back, you know, they're sitting in the back
Speaker 3: so they can cut up during class being instructed about
Speaker 3: I don't remember what the lesson is, is something about
Speaker 3: you know, God is good, and the girls are whispering
Speaker 3: to each other, acting up, and the teacher is like, hey,
Speaker 3: now is it sister Germana who's teaching?
Speaker 2: I think so, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's like, hey, now I see you acting up in class.
Speaker 3: Could you please stand up and repeat what I was
Speaker 3: just saying? And so the is it Alucarda or Justine
Speaker 3: who stands up? Maybe they both do, and they begin
Speaker 3: to recite what it first sounds like what the teacher
Speaker 3: was saying, but instead turns into a speech on the
Speaker 3: virtues of Satan and the deficiencies of Christ.
Speaker 2: Yes, things get out of here fast. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the obviously the nuns are having none of that,
Speaker 3: and they dismiss class and they're like, okay, we got
Speaker 3: to deal with this problem. So they call in Father
Speaker 3: Lazarro to set things right. They're first going to have
Speaker 3: Alucarta go to confession with Father Lazarro and he like
Speaker 3: gets into the confession booth and she violently attacks him. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and this eventually gives way to the flagellation scene that
Speaker 3: we were talking about earlier, where Father Lazarro and all
Speaker 3: the nuns are subjecting themselves to a good hard whipping
Speaker 3: while they're figuring out how to solve this problem. And
Speaker 3: this was both horrifying and hilarious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because we cut right to it. They've been
Speaker 2: whipping on themselves for like an hour, bloody, back sweating. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's gross and yeah and a little hilarious.
Speaker 3: And there's a part in here where one of the
Speaker 3: nuns explains that when Justine fell ill, because Justine again,
Speaker 3: she falls ill and has to take to bed after
Speaker 3: this outburst in the classroom, one of the nuns says
Speaker 3: that when Justine fell ill, she was complaining about being
Speaker 3: bothered by the light, and Father Lazarro says, that's it
Speaker 3: a heliophobic demon, that's a sixth category devil who hates light.
Speaker 2: That was good, So now we have marching orders apparently,
Speaker 2: though again this is the line that's also hilarious because
Speaker 2: this isn't necessarily useful information. It's true at all, not
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 3: He says it's a nocturnal demon, and he says, we
Speaker 3: have to destroy the demon to save the girls. We
Speaker 3: must prepare an exorcism.
Speaker 2: Yes, and as you might imagine, the exorcism is basically
Speaker 2: going to break down to just an awful exercise in
Speaker 2: torture where both of the girls are scrapped to to
Speaker 2: to cross type forms in the chapel. And during the
Speaker 2: course of the exorcism, Justine is essentially murdered by the clergy.
Speaker 3: Right, so they torture her to death in an attempt
Speaker 3: to get the devil out of her. And I would
Speaker 3: say it is in this section of the movie where
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, okay, so the clergy, the clerics, and
Speaker 3: the clergy here are the villains of the film. This
Speaker 3: is sort of an anti clerical narrative about how whatever
Speaker 3: happened with Justine and and el Ukarda early this is
Speaker 3: clearly an overreaction by the clergy, where they are, you know,
Speaker 3: making monsters out of something less than monsters and then
Speaker 3: creating you know, monstrous violence of their own. And that
Speaker 3: is also the opinion of doctor Otsek when he shows
Speaker 3: up in the middle of this torture exorcism and is like,
Speaker 3: in God's name, what are you doing? You know, this
Speaker 3: is madness, superstition, and he they just kind of tolerate him,
Speaker 3: like taking over the scene and being like, we have
Speaker 3: to put a stop to this at once, like they're
Speaker 3: kind of like.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, it's almost it seems as if they some
Speaker 2: of the members of the clergy realize they've gone too far,
Speaker 2: like yeah, which they should at this point. You have
Speaker 2: you have murdered somebody, You've tortured a woman to death.
Speaker 2: You have gone too far, and they're being called on it,
Speaker 2: and some of them aren't accepting that it has gotten
Speaker 2: at hand.
Speaker 3: So Alucarda is still alive. Justine has died, but he
Speaker 3: takes Alucarda back to his house, taking pity on her,
Speaker 3: and takes her back to his house and leaves her
Speaker 3: with his daughter who we met earlier, his blind daughter, Daniella.
Speaker 2: This is a point too where we get the I think,
Speaker 2: where we get the doctor Elsik research Sayne where he
Speaker 2: sits down in his study and he picks up a
Speaker 2: single volume, opens it up we see the title of
Speaker 2: the book is Satan. This is a book about Satan,
Speaker 2: and he basically like put opens it up, turns to
Speaker 2: like one of the illustrations, some sort of satanic woodcut,
Speaker 2: you know, with some sort of outrageous demonic body, and
Speaker 2: then that's just that's all it takes. He just slams
Speaker 2: the book and he's like preposterous, a.
Speaker 3: Bunch of nonsense. And he gives a speech later about
Speaker 3: how he was educated in Paris to believe that this
Speaker 3: was all superstition and nonsense and that you know, we
Speaker 3: have we have to understand the world scientifically, not by
Speaker 3: believing in magic and demons. Right, So he has very
Speaker 3: little tolerance for demonology. But unfortunately, so while Alukarta and
Speaker 3: Daniella are sort of getting to know one another, I
Speaker 3: think Daniella is offering comfort to Alucarda. Uh, doctor Oseek
Speaker 3: is called back to the convent. He has to go
Speaker 3: there again because Justine's body has disappeared.
Speaker 2: Uh oh that's right, yeah, what what has happened? We
Speaker 2: have disappearing bodies and uh and then then it is
Speaker 2: just kind of discovered that what sister Jemana has been burned, yes,
Speaker 2: and they find her like hideously burned body that is
Speaker 2: really gross. Yeah, really gross. They end up bringing that
Speaker 2: into the chapel and they basically there's this whole situation
Speaker 2: where sister Jamana's body is going to steadily come back
Speaker 2: to life as a zombie. They end up beheading it
Speaker 2: on the altar with the sword.
Speaker 3: Father Lazaro does. He well, it takes a lot of wax.
Speaker 3: He's just whacking it over and over and over and over.
Speaker 3: It's like remember the episod we did on the guillotine
Speaker 3: with Jack Ketch, the executioner who could never do it right.
Speaker 3: So he's whacking the neck again and again again. Eventually
Speaker 3: the zombies head comes off and it's still sort of
Speaker 3: like chomping around on the ground, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah yeah, And also the arms are still moving.
Speaker 2: It's like just a grotesque spectacle.
Speaker 3: And here is the scene I mentioned this earlier where
Speaker 3: doctor Otsek is like, wow, that was a real life zombie.
Speaker 3: I repent of my scientific materialism. I now understand that
Speaker 3: magic is real and the devil is real, and I
Speaker 3: am I am humbled.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this is like, it's really interesting to try
Speaker 2: and figure out how to interpret this within the context
Speaker 2: of this film, because I don't think this is a
Speaker 2: situation where Montezuma is ultimately trying to say, see, look,
Speaker 2: the so called you know, renaissance of people, the logical
Speaker 2: scientists and so forth, the philosophers must must now realize
Speaker 2: the religious truth of the universe. But this kind of
Speaker 2: this feels like a track in many ways too, because
Speaker 2: this guy was our rock of logic and reason. He
Speaker 2: was supposed to be the Sherlock Holmes of the story exactly, Yes,
Speaker 2: he was supposed to be the Sherlock Holmes of the story.
Speaker 2: And now he's like, actually, I think it's black magic.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, he was our rock and now
Speaker 2: everything is perhaps tumbling into supernatural madness.
Speaker 3: But in the scene, he is also made aware that
Speaker 3: oh yeah, a Lukarta seems to be possessed by the devil,
Speaker 3: and he's like, oh no, I left her with my kid. Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: So he goes back to his house and they're they're gone,
Speaker 3: His daughter Daniella is gone, and so I think, is
Speaker 3: there anything in between here? Before they end up back
Speaker 3: at the crypt or the abandoned palace where they had
Speaker 3: been before.
Speaker 2: That's our main next destination. Yeah, that's our big set piece,
Speaker 2: because yeah, we get back to the abandoned palace, back
Speaker 2: to the casket, and this is when Justine comes back
Speaker 2: to life, rises from a casket that's full of blood
Speaker 2: like a bathtub.
Speaker 3: Amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, naked covered in blood. Now, now a vampire.
Speaker 2: This is, This is as close as we this is.
Speaker 2: This is a true vampire. Montezuma in interviews is often
Speaker 2: like very firm on the fact that al Karta is
Speaker 2: not a vampire, but that he often I've seen him
Speaker 2: stress that that she has the powers that are attributed
Speaker 2: to Dracula in Bromstoker's novel, but not blood drinking. So
Speaker 2: I don't know how to take all of that, but yeah,
Speaker 2: Justine definitely has come back as a vampire.
Speaker 3: Well, she's at least got some bathory energy. She's bathing
Speaker 3: in blood and she bites is it the mother Superior?
Speaker 3: One of the nuns she bites I think, oh Angelica,
Speaker 3: Oh okay, one of the nuns there there at the coffin,
Speaker 3: and she attacks and Justine bites her on the neck
Speaker 3: and I don't know if drinks her blood, but bites
Speaker 3: her on the neck and kills her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean she may have got a little in there,
Speaker 2: but she makes a mess.
Speaker 3: Now what ultimately happens to Justine? I recall this actually
Speaker 3: being one of the less impressive stagings. He's just kind
Speaker 3: of sloshing a bottle of holy water on her.
Speaker 2: Doctor Zak is like, yeah, like this, like he has
Speaker 2: multiple containers of holy water and heats throwing it at her.
Speaker 2: But and so, but but then we do see she
Speaker 2: keeps getting these like big burn marks on her back
Speaker 2: from where the splashes are hitting her, like acid, and
Speaker 2: so it is also grotesque as well. And eventually this
Speaker 2: is just going to cause Justine to fall to the
Speaker 2: ground into cintegrade.
Speaker 3: Now she melts. Yeah, but then the final confrontation actually
Speaker 3: is with Alukarda. And does that happen here or back
Speaker 3: at the convent? I think maybe they go back to
Speaker 3: the convent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, yeah, yeah, definitely, our main, our final battle,
Speaker 2: our final showdown takes place in the convent itself with
Speaker 2: all of those those creepy Christ effigies. And yeah, this
Speaker 2: is where Alokarda goes into full carry mode, you know,
Speaker 2: shouting the names of various demons, and when she does so,
Speaker 2: it causes various unks and nuns to just rrupt into fire,
Speaker 2: and we get these terrifying man on fire stunts that
Speaker 2: I discussed earlier, Like, I have no reason to believe
Speaker 2: anything here wasn't completely safe, or at least I've never
Speaker 2: read anything to the counter, but in general, even a
Speaker 2: very well done man on stunt just horrifies me.
Speaker 4: These days.
Speaker 2: It's just like, oh my god, it's just terrifying to
Speaker 2: watch these people on fire running around, falling to the ground,
Speaker 2: burning and burning and at times, you know, even kind
Speaker 2: of throwing me out of the film viewing experience because
Speaker 2: I'm like, we got to cut away. This scene has
Speaker 2: to stop me. The guy on fire cut away, and
Speaker 2: then you put him out after the scene, after the
Speaker 2: shot is done. So horrifying stuff.
Speaker 3: Yes, and a Lukarda, of course, is filled with rage.
Speaker 3: This is yet another scene where I guess it would
Speaker 3: be worth asking what power is on display here? What
Speaker 3: power and what motivation are on display here? Are we
Speaker 3: seeing Alucarda's personal age and her personal power or is
Speaker 3: she possessed and is as we heard in the sermon earlier,
Speaker 3: the devil acting through her against his own enemies and
Speaker 3: acting with his own power.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, you know, one way to potentially I didn't really
Speaker 2: think about this till now, but one way to think
Speaker 2: about this film is what if there's only one power
Speaker 2: and it's working, both sides are using it. You know.
Speaker 2: It's like that, you know, almost as if the supernatural
Speaker 2: force itself is neutral, but it only takes on these
Speaker 2: forms as it's like channeled through human ambitions and human
Speaker 2: religions and so forth.
Speaker 3: Like a conventional war, both sides can equally make use
Speaker 3: of the laws of physics, and here in this religious war,
Speaker 3: both sides can equally make use of magic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the magic that they used to counter her
Speaker 2: attempt to use to counter is basically bringing in the
Speaker 2: dead body of Sister Angelica and holding her up like
Speaker 2: a cross. Which this is, Yeah, this is I don't
Speaker 2: think of ever seen this in a film where you know,
Speaker 2: we've seen plenty of examples of a cross or cris
Speaker 2: fix being utilized or some other holy item being used
Speaker 2: to shout down the adversary, but here they lift up
Speaker 2: the dead body of Angelica and hold her up like
Speaker 2: a cross.
Speaker 3: Now, another good question based on this scene, why do
Speaker 3: you think because that is ultimately how Alucarda is defeated.
Speaker 3: Why do you think it works. Is it like the
Speaker 3: Holy Power destroys Alucarda or does that make Alucarda repent
Speaker 3: of her violence and destroy herself or what.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's it's hard to figure out. I
Speaker 2: mean you could you could certainly make a case that
Speaker 2: Angelica was one of the people that was that was
Speaker 2: nice to her. I mean, she was nicer. We saw
Speaker 2: more of that between Angelica and Justine. Yes, So it's
Speaker 2: not a perfect explanation. Or maybe it's this that you know,
Speaker 2: Alocarta has just used up all of her rage, you know,
Speaker 2: and at that point, like it has, it has consumed
Speaker 2: her literally and literally turns her to dust.
Speaker 3: And then of course at the end, strangely, I would
Speaker 3: have thought that Father Lazarro would be one of the
Speaker 3: people who gets burned by Alikarda, but he, I think,
Speaker 3: survives this somehow. And then at the end we've got
Speaker 3: kind of the doctor. We've got like science and religion
Speaker 3: just standing there side by side being like wow, that
Speaker 3: was something.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But but but then the the chapel is on fire,
Speaker 2: everything is just in flames, and you know, as Doyle
Speaker 2: Green points out that in that book, the Mexican cinema
Speaker 2: of darkness, like, it doesn't feel like a victory for anyone.
Speaker 2: At the end, you know, a La Carte is not victorious.
Speaker 2: It doesn't really feel like a victory of logic and reason.
Speaker 2: It doesn't feel like a victory of the church and religion.
Speaker 2: He points out that in various other films, even you
Speaker 2: know films within the Mexican tradition, fire is used to
Speaker 2: secure victory, victory for science and reason in many cases
Speaker 2: over an obsolete and dangerous past. For instance, we see
Speaker 2: this in the At the end, how do they defeat
Speaker 2: the brainiac, who himself is like an icon of a
Speaker 2: troubling past in Mexico, They use flamethars, using fire against him,
Speaker 2: and we see that sort of thing in plenty of
Speaker 2: other horror movies. He writes in Alcarda, the triumph of
Speaker 2: science or religion is turned on its head. The world
Speaker 2: in crisis, defined by the unreasonable, the unexplainable, and the unsolvable,
Speaker 2: is not salvaged by reason or faith. It is simply
Speaker 2: and completely obliterated in flames. The apocalyptic collision of modernity
Speaker 2: and tradition in a perpetual dark age.
Speaker 3: Interesting, yeah to the extent that any edifice of authority
Speaker 3: is victorious at the end of this film. It is
Speaker 3: not vic It has not earned its victory. It is
Speaker 3: not victorious because of its virtues. It's more just kind
Speaker 3: of like, you know, there's this horrible consuming fire and
Speaker 3: it eventually burns itself out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, logic and reason are just kind of standing by
Speaker 2: mouth gate. And if religion is victorious, it is because
Speaker 2: it has it has achieved victory through the glorification of
Speaker 2: death and suffering, like literally holding up the dead body
Speaker 2: and using it to to like channel its energy against
Speaker 2: the adversary here. Yeah, and then we just we cut
Speaker 2: to credits and burning and that's the end of the movie.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 3: Well, Rob, I think this was a good pick. I
Speaker 3: greatly enjoyed al Lukarda and I haven't seen anything quite
Speaker 3: like it before.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it really really stands out. So you know,
Speaker 2: obviously not for everyone, though if you listen to this
Speaker 2: then it wasn't for you. You know it by now.
Speaker 2: But yeah, not not for everyone, but I think a
Speaker 2: very fascinating film and one one where you're really rewarded
Speaker 2: by rewatches as well. So we're gonna go ahead and
Speaker 2: close it out here, but we'd love to hear from
Speaker 2: everyone out there. If you have thoughts on Alocarda, some
Speaker 2: of the other films we mentioned here, Mexican cinema, Mexican
Speaker 2: horror cinema in general, write in we would love to
Speaker 2: hear from you. A reminder that Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 2: Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core
Speaker 2: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set
Speaker 2: aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
Speaker 2: film on Weird House Cinema. And if you want to
Speaker 2: see a list of all the movies we've covered over
Speaker 2: the years, go to letterbox dot com. Our username there
Speaker 2: is weird House, and we got a nice list going.
Speaker 2: You can see everything we've covered and sometimes a peek
Speaker 2: ahead at what's coming next. And as we get into
Speaker 2: October here, of course, that's going to mean a lot
Speaker 2: of halloweeny choices.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: Your Mind, dot.
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